


Devil's Backbone

by DaniofLocksley



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Clarke small town doctor, F/F, F/M, M/M, There will be fluff, because why not, bellamy busts out of prison and clarke finds him, bellamy ex-con, don't know the burn rate yet, lots of small town dynamics, the southern prison escape au, there will be hiding from the police, there will be some angst and some sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-01-27 15:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12584812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaniofLocksley/pseuds/DaniofLocksley
Summary: Don’t care if he’s guilty, don’t care if he’s notHe’s good and he’s bad and he’s all that I’ve gotClarke Griffin's main focus in life was preserving her father's memory and her town, even if the people in it drove her crazy at times. Bellamy Blake's sole focus in life was his sister, even if it meant getting locked up in prison for life to protect her. One shoddy escape by Bellamy and moment of pity to a bleeding man on the side of the road by Clarke leads to hiding from the law and breaking down walls they thought would stand forever.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This kept going through my head any time I listened to the band the Civil Wars and I couldn't stop thinking of things to write for it. A lot of this comes from things from my childhood, things people around me really said, and real people I know. Small town life is weird. Mrs. Kane is actually based on my great uncle who has a much fouler mouth and temper but I love none-the-less. I really do live in the south though not near a swamp so this is as authentic as I can make it. This story is based on the song Devil's Backbone by the Civil Wars.

_Oh Lord, Oh Lord, what have I done?_  
_I’ve fallen in love with a man on the run_  
_Oh Lord, Oh Lord, I’m begging you please_  
_Don’t take that sinner from me_  
_Oh don’t take that sinner from me_

Ark was a beautiful small town in Louisiana on the edge of a swamp around an hour drive away from New Orleans. Nearly everyone who lived there had been born there and anonymity was a foreign concept for the residents. In that charming small town way, everyone knew everyone. 

Which was Clarke’s current problem as everyone now knew she had broken things off with her long-term girlfriend and kept tiptoeing around her. 

She couldn’t even go to the local Piggly Wiggly without seeing Mrs. Jordan hovering near the frozen meat section out of the corner of her eye. No one paused that long next to the cow tongues and chicken’s feet. Despite her irritation, this was realistically the last bit of peace she would get over the subject she knew. 

The minute everyone stopped hovering and feeling bad for her they would descend, trying to figure out why exactly Lexa had left, and how Clarke was doing. The old ladies who sat in front of Niylah’s consignment shop would be the first. All sharp bony fingers, the lingering smell of baby powder, and well-meaning blessings that were just on the edge of being insulting. Social graces were the first things to go with age, and she couldn’t ignore them and risk offending one of the families in town when the time came. 

It was nice having an entire town as a support system at times, but it could be overwhelming. Particularly when said townspeople thrived on gossip despite how kind their intentions might be. Until something new happened, which wasn’t terribly often, she would be the talk of every staff room, front porch, and football game.

How could she explain that Lexa simply had not been built for small-town life? Anyone who looked at her could have told you that but Clarke had mastered denial a long time ago and had thought maybe she would stay. She had gotten a promotion to partner at her law firm and moved to Baton Rouge. Lexa had hardly had to think about it before she was gone. 

It hurt, not being enough for her to stay. The situation reminded her too much of why her mother had left. Truthfully Clarke couldn’t hold it against her. The town was charming, quaint, and on occasion suffocating. Her family had lived and died in their house on the edge of the swamp on the outskirts of town for as long as the town had existed. Once upon a time she had wanted to get away from Ark too, hadn’t wanted to spend her entire life there and never leave. That was before her father got sick. 

Now she was content to have her giant support system, even if the idea of having anything private was made impossible by the close proximity of her neighbors. 

________________________________________________________

Jail is so much worse than what you see in the movies, and it’s only made worse when you’re in there for the wrong reasons. He could not bring himself to regret his reason for being there despite it, she was safe, and she would stay that way now. 

Bellamy had been in for four years when he finally got his opportunity to break out and search for her. He had to know she was ok, had to see her and make sure she was taken care of. There was no chance of him ever going free legally, Cage had seen to that. 

The cell blocks were always either too cold or too hot depending on the season. Guards made it a habit to feed the mice, hell sometimes better than they fed the prisoners, and ensured they never quite went away.

He was kept with the others who were considered dangerous or psychologically unstable. The guards called them reapers, said they howled like the dead and they weren’t entirely wrong the occupants of the cell block were very loud in their protest of their current state. It was a joke, calling them dangerous most of the men in there could use medical help, not a cage. The man in the cell across from him had been picked up for accidentally knocking a policeman while having a fit. The only thing Bellamy could say in defense of it was at least they were inside out of the weather now and had regular mealtimes, despite the mysterious nature of how any of the food was made or edible. 

The guards had gotten used to him, they knew he wasn’t fun to target. He just let it roll off his back and continued to stare blankly at them. There wasn’t a thing they could do to him that hadn’t been done already. For his good behavior, he was allowed out into the yard three times a week, a break in the otherwise indistinguishable monotony of prison life. 

Despite guards knowing to leave off of him, his fellow convicts had no such hold-ups and though he tried to keep a low profile he had managed to anger one of them. 

Dax was in for aggravated assault, they weren’t supposed to know why each other were there but the guards occasionally let it slip. Bellamy wasn’t surprised when he heard a passing guard mention it in conversation as he stood at the gate to the yard.

Dax had the appearance of someone who was perpetually angry. There likely hadn’t been a day in his life where he had been entirely satisfied and it showed in the tense way he held himself as though always posed for a fight. Where he had developed his distaste for Bellamy was a bit of a mystery, it could be he had taken too much time at the weight stations one day. Maybe he had scored on him in basketball once, or it could come from nowhere, just a whim he had one day and had held onto like a dog with a bone. If Bellamy were a betting man he would say it was the last option.

The yard was sparsely outfitted with a few weight stations to the right and a basketball court with two picnic tables nearby to the left. The building blocked off any real sunlight that may have otherwise greeted inmates upon entering the yard. Grass struggled out from between the cracks of the sidewalk, grasping at what slim rays of light it could find. The barbed wire above the fences was rusted and in need of replacement though it would be years before they likely were. 

Nearly every time he was allowed out he went to the same weight station with the pea green seat split by either the heat or a makeshift shiv that never failed to leave bits of yellowed foam attached to the back of his jumpsuit. The day he found his way to freedom was no different he had just finished a set when he heard the old gate shriek as Dax entered the yard. 

Ever since a particularly nasty punch from behind and a stint in solitary after Bellamy had made it a point to keep tabs on where Dax was in the yard. It was O’s birthday though, and he couldn’t help but think of where she was and how she was doing as he stared up at the overcast sky, ready to do another set. She would be seventeen now, one more year left in the foster system before she could potentially reach out to him. 

Damn, he missed her. 

Even if she did drive him up the wall. He wanted to know how her classes were. How tall had she gotten? Did she understand what had happened? Why he was here? If he could just explain things to her that was all he could ask for, all he wanted. 

“Hey asshole”, Bellamy stood abruptly as Dax cast a shadow over him looming from the side of the weight bench. 

“Dax I don’t want to do this with you today-”, he hadn’t finished speaking before he felt a sharp pain in his side and began to wheeze. 

The bastard had stabbed him and managed to knick his lung. 

The yard erupted in shouts and shuffling as the guards tried to reach him. Dax’s face was twisted in a satisfied leer as Bellamy wheeled back from him, the world growing fuzzy on the edges as he struggled to keep on his feet. His last thought before he collapsed was that he couldn’t leave Octavia alone.  
_________________________________________________  
The biddies descended a week after Lexa left for Baton Rouge.

Her dad used to say that Mrs. Kane, the unofficial matriarch of the town and most prominent lady to sit in front of Niylah’s, was as old as Jesus. Jake Griffin couldn’t remember a time where she hadn’t been old and quick-tongued. That quick tongue of hers was libel to turn sharp at a moment’s notice if you displeased her, and no one wanted to displease Mrs. Kane. 

Her husband had been the caretaker for the only cemetery in town and ex-mayor before he died a few years back. Upsetting her or her husband tended to get you ostracized and potentially lose your place in the graveyard if you didn’t grovel properly and make it up to the Kane’s. That might sound silly to someone who wasn’t from around there but burials were serious business, not being buried in your family plot was a massive embarrassment.  


Clarke was waiting for the day they went to bury someone and accidentally hit an unmarked grave where people had gotten desperate and snuck in at night to hastily bury a family member. They hadn’t had it happen since Clarke was born but she had heard enough stories from Mrs. Kane and others. It never failed to get Mrs. Kane’s blood up to talk about it. 

Thus Clarke had endured the interrogation by the town’s very own Godmother because despite always being her favorite there was always that chance she could piss her off and lose her spot. Being ostracized right before the town’s fall festival was not something she wanted to have to deal with. 

Murphy had made that mistake in high school when he was young and ignorant and learned Clarke like girls as well as boys. He had made an unfavorable comment in a moment of stupidity loudly in the middle of English, Mr. Pike had made sure to tell Mrs. Kane. He’d had to wash Mrs. Kane’s car for two months before anyone would dare speak to him but he learned his lesson. Mrs. Kane didn’t take kindly to bigotry. 

“Clarke honey, where’d that girlfriend of yours run off to?”, she asked with her eyebrows raised as if she didn’t know perfectly well where Lexa had moved, why, and what moving company she had used. 

It was just before closing when Clarke hadn’t been able to avoid going to Niylah’s any longer. The Piggly Wiggly only had so much and buying tomatoes from anyone other than Niylah for the tomato pie she wanted to make would have been a crime. Normally the ladies cleared off the front porch by five for dinner at their respective homes but Clarke managed to show up on the one night they lingered in their worn rockers and chairs. 

“Well Mrs. Kane she got offered a partnership at her firm, I couldn’t let her turn it down, it was too big of an opportunity.”, Clarke tried to smile as genuinely as possible down at the woman who grasped at her arm with clawed fingers. Despite remaining seated Mrs. Kane felt much bigger than Clarke, she had a way of doing that, filling the space with her presence and making those around her feel smaller. For a woman of four foot eleven, she held a commanding presence. Now if only she would drop the subject and let Clarke get her damn tomatoes before Niylah had to stay open past closing. 

She didn’t drop it. 

“Surely she could have commuted between here and Baton Rouge, come home on the weekends maybe?” Mrs. Kane had that look on her face she got before she tried to fix people up. She fancied herself a matchmaker and though she was skilled in many things, matchmaking wasn’t one of them. 

“No ma’am it wouldn’t have worked out for us, she just wasn’t the one I guess”, she said with a little shrug and nervous laugh trying to discretely pry her arm from the woman’s grasp. 

At that Mrs. Kane drew her head into the circle of women around her whispering and clucking to one another but leaving Clarke to enter the store as she pleased. She doubted that would be the last she heard from them but for now, she could get her tomatoes in peace. 

The screen door creaked with age banging behind her as she shot Niylah an exasperated look. The Trading Post was Niylah’s father’s but you couldn’t tell because he was hardly ever in town. When he was he spent his time in their fields planting and harvesting the produce they sold in his store. 

Niylah huffed out a laugh from her place behind the counter, nearly blocked off by the large plastic scratch off containers showing off the newest games for local gamblers. Her face was worn, tired from a week of manning the store, hair pulled back in a messy blond ponytail and faded beige apron askew. Tomorrow she would have a brief reprieve, it was a Sunday and the Trading Post was closed on Sundays, everything was closed on Sundays.

“They eat you alive?”, her muffled question barely heard from where Clarke stood with the produce. 

“I don’t know how she knew I was coming today but she had to. She never stays this late, she was waiting for me so her sewing circle could pump me for gossip.”, Clarke crinkled her nose in consternation. 

The tomatoes she tested were just starting to go soft but they were still perfect for what she needed. They were far better than the depressing little orange-red lumps the Piggly Wiggly tried to pass off as tomatoes. She was trying out her daddy’s tomato pie tonight. He was well known for it and had even won a few ribbons at the county fair a town over for it. Though she had never tried to attempt to make it before it was one of those nights where she missed him so much it tugged at her heart and if she couldn’t have her dad then she would have to settle for his tomato pie recipe.

“You know you have a mole in that doctor’s office of yours right? Jackson lives off of Mrs. Kane’s fudge, she’s got him in her pocket. He’d tell her anything she wants to avoid being cut off from that peanut butter chocolate chip fudge.”, Niylah laughed as she shelved the last box of cigarettes and turned to gesture Clarke to the counter so she could weigh the tomatoes. 

Jackson had been looking a little less stick-like lately. Being a doctor one would figure he would stay away from that fudge, everyone knew it was half butter and the other half sugar. Mrs. Kane had already succeeded at giving one of her chihuahua's diabetes from drinking bits of her sweet tea from her glass, a truly disturbing thing to watch as she was the one who offered the dog the glass. It was worse when she drank after it. The poor things were hardly recognizable as chihuahua’s they were so rotund. If Jackson kept it up he would make himself sick on all of that fudge. 

“Of course she has someone from my office in her pocket, I swear she missed her calling in the FBI or the mob.”, Clarke sighed, grabbing her plastic bag and prepping herself for the inquisition that awaited her outside the screen door. 

She tried to hurry out as best she could, fumbling in her pocket for her keys as she called out behind her to Mrs. Kane, “Have a nice night Mrs. Kane! See you at the town hall Tuesday!”  
“Goodnight dear! Call me if you need any help with that tomato pie!”

Moments like these made Clarke feel relieved that she was Mrs. Kane’s favorite in town other than her son. Truly she had to have some affiliation with the mob to know as much as she did, that woman was terrifying.  
____________________________________________

Waking up after being stabbed with a makeshift knife in a prison yard, unsurprisingly enough, is an unpleasant experience to have.

Bleary-eyed and sore Bellamy came to in a small hospital room to the beeps of machinery. The blinds to the glass wall to the right of the hospital cot were drawn but a shadow of a figure could be seen at one of the far corners. 

He was being guarded, but if the lack of restraints were any indication they had not expected him to wake up so soon. 

When he had gotten his wisdom teeth out at 16 they had learned he had something of a tolerance to anesthesia which wasn’t uncommon. At the time it had been a pain because it meant going in twice to get all of the teeth removed because they hit the limit of how much they could use at a time on him too quick to do them all at once. Now it was his saving grace. 

The room was cold and that particular antiseptic hospital smell lingered everywhere. He hated hospitals. Bellamy hated hospitals almost as much as he hated prison. 

Almost.

The chart on the wall showed that the nurse on the floor had come through to check on him so he had plenty of time before someone else entered the room. With a muffled groan he pulled himself up to stand, pulling at his stitches as he did so. 

Shivering as the cold floor touched his feet he made his way over to the large set of windows to the left of his bed, making sure to keep an eye on the guard’s shadow. It was a process, making sure he didn’t pull out his IV or move any of the wires attached to him but he managed it. 

From the view outside the window, he could tell the room was on an upper floor but at the center of the building. Below the window was a service roof covered in gravel and connecting all of the windows in the innermost part of the hospital. 

With an eye on the guard, he began to wiggle the window open slowly, wary of making any noise. Once he had it open he grabbed a blanket from the bed to cover his bare ass hanging from the hospital gown and unplugged the machines before taking off all the wires as quickly as possible. Whether they alerted someone once the machine was turned off he wasn’t sure but he wasn’t sticking around to find out. 

Thin hospital blanket wrapped around his back like a cape he escaped through the window, falling down to the gravel below. It stung, he’d be digging gravel out of his knees for days, but he was out. Going window to window he searched for an empty room to re-enter and start his hunt for clothes far from the guarded room he had left. It took awhile, whatever hospital he was in had its hands full with patients, but he managed to find an empty room to hoist himself into. 

After that, it was as simple as blending in with the other patients until he found the staff lockers and managed to steal a pair of street clothes that somewhat fit him. The button up was possibly the most hideous 70’s reject he had ever seen, and not necessarily conducive to blending in, but at least now his ass and other bits weren’t flying in the wind. It would do. 

The day Bellamy got stabbed the stars must have aligned just right for him because he escaped the hospital without a hitch and started hitchhiking his way to freedom and Octavia.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I finally churned out chapter two after all the lovely comments I got telling me to continue I couldn't help it. Thank you so much for all the encouragement! Please let me know if it continues to meet your expectations or if you're a new reader! If you haven't read it already I am currently trying to finish a third and final installment on my songfic for the show sometime in the next week. Oh and Ms. Cole was a real honest to goodness person I knew, I still have no idea how she made those yeast rolls she was so tiny and old.

_Why are you so far from me?_  
_In my arms is where you ought to be_  
_How long will you make me wait?_  
_I don't know how much more I can take_  
_I missed you but I haven't met you_  
_Oh but I want to_  
_How I do_

____

 

The old Griffin house was beautiful, and easily the biggest house in town. It had been built on since the founding of the town by Clarke’s great great some odd grandfather. There was a statue of him in front of town hall but it was made unrecognizable, faded from acid rain. Where his nose began or ended was a mystery, he gave the horrifying appearance of someone whose face had melted. Every few years someone put forward a proposal to raise funds as a town to get the statue restored but it never got passed. 

When she was younger she used to pretend the old house was a palace and she was a princess, riding her bike round and round the wrap around porch pretending she rode a noble steed. The french lattice-work was still exquisite, and from afar it did look like a palace, but it never failed to give her new headaches. 

The back part of the porch caved in on one corner and had to be repaired the summer before. Getting the heat to work took a divine miracle, with air conditioning being a far flung dream. When you took a shower in the upstairs bathroom one of the pipes in the wall made a horrible racket clunking around wherever it was. On occasion the water in the sink refused to come on and she would have to go out to the well house. 

It was something she was used to, she had grown up here, had accidentally been born here when her mom couldn’t make it to the hospital in time. Days like today though, she wondered if the old house had it out for her. 

The tomato pie had turned out alright, it wasn’t quite as good as her dad’s but it was cheese and tomatoes and bread and that was a hard mix to mess up. She wouldn’t be winning any culinary awards but it made her feel closer to him at the very least. 

Curled up with her computer on the couch Clarke had enjoyed watching Netflix as the rain picked up outside. Wifi was one thing she refused to give up for lost in the old house, and as a result she paid an astronomical amount every month to get the one provider who would run to her house at the highest speed possible. 

It was well worth it, she could concede everything else that came with the house but she needed to be able to stream shows. At least she didn’t have to pay rent to anyone, paying exorbitant rates for internet was something she could afford. 

Everything in the house was quiet, the old porch swing in back creaking, but otherwise all that could be heard was the pitter patter of rain on the tin roof and the buzz of the show Clarke was binging. Then came the sound of dripping from somewhere behind the couch, a persistent sound that only picked up the longer she ignored it.

This house would be the death of her.

“Fuck me sideways.”, with a sigh and a moan Clarke abandoned her nest of blankets setting her now empty plate on the coffee table. The longer she left whatever had broken in her house alone the more likely it was that it would become an even bigger problem that was much more difficult to fix. 

With her fuzzy socks protecting her feet from the chill of the hardwood floor she trudged to the source of the noise, the back of the kitchen right before the door to the sunroom. Upon spotting the problem she let out a stream of curses that would make Mrs. Kane blush. 

“Shit, motherfucking hell in a handbasket.”, she groaned at the ceiling as if cursing at it would somehow make it get its act together and stop leaking.  
Needless to say it didn’t work.

The ceiling was a darker off white where the leak persistently dripped from. The water damage spidered out from the source slightly, it’d be far worse by morning. They were calling for storms all night in the news and there would be more in the next few weeks. 

She was too tired for this. Lincoln was usually who she called when the house tried to chew her up and spit her out with its laundry list of problems, but he was out of town again. Her dad would have known how to fix it, he always had. 

It was a future Clarke problem she decided, and shoved the big mop bucket from out in the sunroom under the leak so it didn’t damage the wood floors. Tomorrow she would look up videos on how to patch up a roof and go into town and badger Jasper into opening his dad’s shop so she could get materials.

If she sniffled a bit before falling asleep that night she surmised it was because of the cold, heating the entire massive old house never quite worked. It was plausible. It was certainly not because Lexa had left her alone and the house reminded her of everything she had lost. Clarke wasn’t lonely, she was fine, really. 

_____________________________________________________________

Though he had done time Bellamy lacked the skills of any self respecting ex-con and as such had no idea how to hotwire a car. The garage at the hospital would have granted him access to any number of getaway vehicles but he wouldn’t have known how to lift them in the first place. 

As it was he decided sticking around the hospital was a quick way to get caught and had hopped into the first car that would pull over for him outside of the garage. He got lucky with his first ride, it was a church group that didn’t ask questions. They did try to convert him and cajoled him into singing a litany of song along the way but they were otherwise pleasant. They gave him a free mini bible and several pamphlets when he left their van on the edge of Baton Rouge. He didn’t have the heart to refuse them, waving goodbye with the hand that held the reading material with a lopsided grin as they rode off. 

The pamphlets had been horrifying but amusing.

Though the urge to head toward New Orleans and his sister tugged at him now wasn’t the time, they would look for him there first. He’d have to lie low and find a way to contact her, let the heat die down a bit before reconnecting the way he so desperately wanted. 

The second ride was a trucker, she seemed fine at first, said her name was Ontari. Conversation between the two had been, stilted, at best. 

“You running from something?”, she’d first asked once they pulled off of the side ramp an onto the road. 

“Nah, just a bit down on my luck, I figure I’ll settle somewhere eventually I just haven’t found what I’m looking for yet”, he laughed off the too true quiry. Ontari hadn’t looked convinced. 

“Liar, I reckon you killed someone didn’t you? Gutted them and strung them up and now you’re on the run from the law.”, her eyes glinted strangely at the talk of murder and made Bellamy shift uncomfortably in his seat.

It didn’t take long talking to her to discover she was frightening to say the least. She drove with a large knife strapped to her thigh. Bellamy could just make out a pistol poking out of a bag on the floor behind him. When he asked to be dropped at the next rest station she seemed rather put out. Thankfully she didn’t start talking about murder the rest of the way. Her eyes however twitched ever so slightly toward the bag in the back of the cabin, but she hadn’t fought him on it. 

When she drove off onto the interstate on ramp away from the stop he breathed a sigh of relief. Some part of him was damn sure he had just avoided having his balls chopped of an quite literally handed to him. 

The truck resting station acted as his home for the night after Ontari left. The diner area was full of drivers and lot lizards alike so no one looked twice when he ordered water and sat at the counter. 

It didn’t take long for people in the room to take interest in him, they probably thought he was a lot lizard himself. That worked out just fine for him, there was nothing wrong with the oldest profession in the world and it meant he might have a place to lay his head tonight.

“Hey there stranger, want to come home with me?”, someone finally got the guts to ask and upon turning to see her, he figured he wouldn’t have to defend his important bits with this driver. She wasn’t strapped like Ontari and the hungry look on her face was one he had yet to be able to satisfy in himself since escaping.  
Years with only your hand as company would do that to you.

He stayed the night with a girl named Roma and pulled a stitch or two out in the process. All in all it wasn’t a bad way to spend the night, he’d even gotten a chance to wash the worst areas of his body in a bathroom sink so the smell of armpit stink didn’t overwhelm him after his nightly exertions. Come morning he learned she was headed in the opposite direction of him, back to Baton Rouge, and they parted ways. 

People were less likely to pick up hitchhikers on the highway than town roads and it was a quick way to end up a pancake on the road. For the next few days he struck out into the woods near the highway, trying to keep in a direction that lead away from where he had come at the very least. Horns and passing traffic served as his nightly lullaby and it was oddly soothing after years of men howling in the cells surrounding him. 

After a night in the woods he sincerely missed Roma’s lumpy cot in the eighteen wheeler, but sore as he was the next morning he pressed on away from Baton Rouge. 

__________________________________________

“Are you sure about this Clarke, Lincoln comes back soon and you know he can fix the hole. You might make it worse fiddling with stuff you don’t know about.”, Jasper held up his hands in surrender at the severe glare Clarke directed at him at his suggestion. 

He wasn’t wrong, she was liable to make the hole worse, but that didn’t mean she wanted to wound her pride and agree with Jasper about it. Youtube was an excellent resource, people used it to build tiny homes all the time surely she could fix a hundred year old leaky roof. 

“If I wait until he comes back I’ll be up to my ears in water and have to deal with water damage as well as a leaky roof. Besides, when have I ever shown that I couldn’t handle something?”

She grabbed the last of her repair materials from Jasper and shoved them into the bed of her dads old light blue pickup. It was more rust than blue but she didn’t have the heart to get it painted. 

The town was deserted except for Jasper’s shop where he waved from the door before heading back in to get ready for Sunday supper. That was where the rest of the town likely was as well, washing up and helping out, or talking with family while the older folks made supper. Being allowed to actually help cook the meal was a right of passage.  
Ms. Cole down the road still refused to let anyone else make the yeast rolls for her family and she was blind from cataracts and nearing a hundred. 

You didn’t really eat breakfast on Sunday. Families went to whatever congregation they were part of or cleaned house in preparation for supper. Supper was a combination of lunch and dinner and left everyone so full they would feel it until Wednesday. 

Clarke missed it. 

Mrs. Kane invited her every week but it wasn’t the same and she rarely took her up on it. No, Clarke was heading home to a frustrating afternoon of Youtube roof repairs and maybe a bologna sandwich if she remembered to eat at all. 

The light on the edge of town before the roads turned to dirt by the bank was out again, flashing yellow continually. Tapping out an impatient tune on the steering wheel Clarke nearly missed seeing the figure moving toward her in the distance from her right, approaching from outside the town’s limits. They stuck out like a sore thumb, the hideous 70’s shirt a particular shade of puke green that was hard not to notice. 

She was inclined to ignore them at first, until she realized she couldn’t recognize the man. New people weren’t common in Ark, the last new person to come through town was a year ago when a couple blew a tire a mile out from the town limits. They’d only stayed for maybe a day before Raven had fixed it for them. 

Like nearly every woman since the creation of cars she had been warned against taking hitchhikers and she was ready to leave him there and call the sheriff. She likely would have if he hadn’t stumbled at that exact moment and she’d seen the flash of blood. 

Without a thought she veered right instead of heading straight toward home, the truck groaned in protest at the harsh treatment, though she hardly heard the screech of the tires. The man continued to shamble forward, collapsing as she pulled up next to him, one arm clutching his side the other holding him up from hitting the ground. 

“Sir? Sir is there anything I can do to help?”, she asks as she slams her truck door and makes her way to the hunched figure. He only groans so she takes it as a yes. 

“I’m a doctor, I’m going to approach you and check your injury now ok?”, she didn’t hear any protest and made her way cautiously forward. When she braced him on her shoulder he only collapsed further, putting nearly his full weight on her. They barely managed to avoid toppling them both. 

With the shift she gained better access to see the wound and it didn’t look promising. He was bleeding profusely, shirt hitched up to show the bottom of a rather deep puncture. It appeared to have been stitched up at one point, professionally she noted, but had been pulled, probably from his current choice in travel. 

What was this man running from to be walking down a highway after recently procuring a life threatening wound? 

All of the alarm bells in Clarkes head were ringing telling her she needed to get the sheriff. Until he shifted again in her arms, tangle of curls sweeping off of his forehead allowing her to see his face for the first time. 

He was waxen and unnaturally pale based on his skin tone, causing the smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose to stand out in relief. With a fluttering of long dark lashes he opened his eyes, the dark brown of them lightened by the afternoon sun shining down into them. Eyes wide in a strange kind of awe, the likes of which Clarke had never experienced. As if he were seeing something divine rather than bedraggled doctor holding him up on the side of a dusty nearly unused road. 

Clarke tried valiantly not to stare, he was an injured man after all and not a piece of meat she could freely ogle. Plus she wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t in the process of bleeding out and dying in her arms. Regardless she couldn’t rip her eyes away from the face in front of her. She felt a deep sense of knowing within her. 

A whisper of, “Oh there you are.”, from the hollow of her chest. 

The stress of the situation must be getting to her. 

“Sir I think I need to get help, someone’s hurt you pretty badly, we need to file a report.”, she stuttered out, as confident as she could be in the current situation. 

Finally the strange dying man spoke for the first time, “No cops, please.” 

Well hell. What had she just gotten herself involved in? 

Ignoring the fact that she was bringing trouble home to roost she just nodded, smiling encouragingly as she lifted the man up with a huff. Whoever he was he fought passing out until he was loaded into the truck, she’d have to worry about dragging him into the house when she got there.  
___________________________________________________________  
The first few days after the truck station had been fine, until he had tumbled down a small hollow in the woods and tore himself open again. 

With more insides on the outside than was strictly necessary the trek became more challenging as the road stretched for miles with no sight of help to be found. Sticking to more deserted highways had been a smart way to escape detection, but it also meant no assistance now that he was bleeding like a stuck pig. 

Bellamy kept pressure on the wound refusing to stop to sleep for fear he wouldn’t wake up once he did. By the second day after his tumble he started to hallucinate that Octavia was with him. 

“Come on big brother, you’ve got this. Blake's are made of tougher stuff than this.”, she cheered him on as she trotted beside him as full of energy as he remembered. 

He didn’t dignify the hallucination with a response but couldn’t help but think this was the end. Bellamy Blake’s story would end on a back highway to nowhere, killed by a shiv wound from a disgruntled dick. 

When he saw the town he thought he might be hallucinating it too, yellow light flickering in the distance. Just a little further, he just had to make it a little further and someone could help. 

He went down on his knees before he could reach it, an odd screeching in his ears that he was too out of it to place its origin. His mother was calling him, time to get out of bed. The world was fuzzy and warm but it was time to get going. The thought that he had to get Octavia or they would both be late for school circulated in his head.

Out of it as he was he didn’t hear her approach, but when he came to from the brief lack of lucidity he wondered if he was still hallucinating. The sun shone in a halo behind whoever the blonde woman was. Bright blue eyes squinched up in the corners in concern. Nonsensical though it was he wondered if this was the guardian angel his mother always told him he had. 

His unoccupied hand twitched to touch her face but abruptly stopped in its path as she spoke, “Sir I think I need to get help, someone’s hurt you pretty badly, we need to file a report.”

Not a fever dream guardian angel then, he was profusely bleeding on a random woman, who might end his escape before it had really begun. No, he needed help but he wasn’t going back. It took what little energy he had left but he managed to grunt out “No cops, please.” 

The woman may not have been a real angel but she nodded and smiled at him, he was free of capture a little while longer. When she smiled at him like that, it felt like he’d touched something divine, but that could have been because he was dying.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Any comments are appreciated especially with this first chapter as I'd like to see how this story is received or if it's worth pursuing further.


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